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Khoa's Space

If you can have dinner with anyone in the world

So it is time for the next Brearblog Carnival. ʕ/ ·ᴥ·ʔ/

This month's theme is: “If you can have dinner with anyone in the world, who would they be?” This is my usual conversation opener with anyone. It opens up a little window into their world, about things that they care deeply about at the moment. A dinner is not short-form entertainment. It’s when you spend an evening with someone to share what you both love. So if it can be anyone, who would that be?

It can be anyone, dead or alive, famous or lowkey.

Community echoes:

My submission:

For the love of asking questions and seeing the world through people’s little windows, I would love to spend an evening with Thuy Minh, a journalist, author, and talk show host. She was the host of Have a Sip for the past 7 or something years, with over 255 episodes, which I spent 5,000 minutes playing on repeat last year. Each episode, listeners are brought into a “coffee-date” with an author, an artist, a water expert, anyone whose life is told the moment you hear their name, or anyone whose story is still in the making. It is just almost magical to listen to stories from experts in their field, in such a cozy setting.

I don’t even know when I have the chance to be on Have a Sip, maybe never because the show was discontinued, but I would love to have a chance to answer some of Have a Sip's signature questions.

What does your drink say about you?

My go-to drink is cold brew, but I may opt for something more calming like hot tea or adventurous like strawberry matcha.

With the Texas heat, cold brew offers the refreshing feeling with just the right amount of caffeine kick. I have tried other options like an americano or even an iced latte, but I always come back to cold brew as my everyday drink. I move around a lot during the day, in khakis, and in the Texas heat, so cold brew just comes naturally. On weekends though, I usually choose to have hot tea. It is another type of caffeine, but there is no kick to it. The energy I get from tea is more evenly distributed throughout the day. There is no sudden trembling cause some idea came suddenly.

Coffee is full of youth, and tea is for procedures and stability. Coffee energizes, and tea sustains; that is how I see it.

Last week, I tried a drink I have never tried before. Actually, two drinks. I was feeling adventurous and wanted to try something new. I had matcha with coconut water, and strawberry matcha. Those are the combinations that I could never imagine would work well together, but they do. What is the worst thing that can happen, other than having a drink that I don’t like? Sometimes small changes bring new ideas to my everyday rotation of coffee and tea.

One interesting fact I know from the show is that the word cappuccino originates from the friars Capuchin, which means hood. The drink was named cappuccino because its brown color after milk and espresso were mixed together resembles the friar’s brown color hood. The guest on that episode also notes that he finds another correlation between the scent of freshly made cappuccino and the aromatic smoke friars use in their ceremony. They have the same calming effect.

Thuy Minh rarely shares what she drinks with the guests, mostly because they never asked her back, or maybe the production team decided to cut that part out. Either way, I remembered that on most episodes, she would just drink plain water in a white mug, or sometimes hot tea or coffee. It is understandable that she drinks mostly water; she speaks for a living. You would want your voice to be as clear as possible.

If you were to be stuck on a deserted island, what book would you bring with you?

This is quite a rhetorical, even romantic, question, cause in the moment of survival, who would think about a book to read? If I were to be stuck on a deserted island, I would just bring a blank notebook and a pencil to document my journey there.

If I had to bring a book, I would bring the one I am currently reading, which is Essentials of Supply Chain Management by Michael Hugos. The book was published by Wiley, an educational publisher that is famous for textbooks, but the book is incredibly readable. Hugos really did a great job simplifying concepts so an engineering student can read and enjoy it.

Looking at my intersection of the circular economy supply chain and my background in chemical engineering, I find it to be an interesting midway point that I am gradually figuring out myself. I remember applying to universities across the world with aerospace engineering, and getting into Texas A&M with my declared major as aerospace. Within two years here and talking to more people, I find chemical engineering much more closely aligns with what I want to do. It has been a wild two years, but I am glad I gathered enough information to make that switch. It is nice to see how the love for airplanes turns into the love for logistics and science that makes a plane fly.

I realized that as I progress in this field, the number of books that I read will start compounding. I don’t think my brain can hold that much information with great resolution. I usually think of a quote from someone else that Thuy Minh usually quotes. Pardon the bad game of telephone, but it goes like: there are only sections on my bookshelf, the have-reads, and the have-not-reads. How can I motivate myself to read more and remember more? A long time ago, my middle school had a dedicated time for reading. Students would just spend time reading, then log what they read into a notebook. The idea was fantastic, but the execution was terrible. I was never able to choose what to read, and the logging was a formality because I couldn't reference the log easily. I think I'll bring it back now, because there are markdowns that I can easily find and index, and I have the freedom to choose what to read. Imagine a personalized library where information is one search away.

So, who would you bring?

Bloggers, thank you for reading until here. Let’s start August with dinners that would fill you up physically and mentally. Please notify me somehow so I can read your entry, and add them here for many other people to see. I would love to read what you have to say.

That’s it for now,

Live long and prosper 👽🖖

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